Even though he's statistically the best pitcher (player?) in the
majors this year, the source of his greatness — the knuckleball —
makes him a second-tier player in the eyes of the baseball world.

It's not just baseball's fault.

All sports have entrenched assumptions about what an excellent
player looks like.

In the NBA, an excellent player is a scoring
wing who makes difficult shots.

In the NFL, an excellent player is a
pocket-passing quarterback with a cannon arm.

And in baseball — a sport obsessed with its own traditions more
than any other — an excellent pitcher is a hard-throwing
right-hander with a wicked breaking ball that strikes a lot of
people out.

It's not enough for Dickey to be 12-1 with a 2.40 ERA. He has to
be 12-1 with a 2.40 ERA in a very specific way.

The baseball world sees Dickey and his knuckleball as a gimmick,
an odd and fleeting path to effectiveness that automatically
disqualifies him from the realm of great pitchers and places him
his own separate and inferior category.

And the anti-Dickey bias includes one other key assumption: this
won't last.

Knuckleballers are historically streaky, and that allows the
baseball world to write off his greatness as a stroke of luck. It
allows people to de-legitimize him under the assumption that his
greatness doesn't come from some innate skill.

Of course this is a lie because any player, no matter how he
plays, can suddenly "lose it." Just look at Tim Lincecum — who
was once in the "great pitcher" category that Dickey isn't
allowed to be in. Lincecum was the archetypal great,
hard-throwing pitcher, but his greatness didn't last. It can
happen to anybody.

The basic lesson is this: Greatness in sports is not
about objective superiority, it's about satisfying popular
assumptions about what greatness ought to look like.

There's an inherent bias against players who succeed differently.
Michael Vick was only accepted as a great player when he starting
throwing more from the pocket in Philadelphia. Greg Maddux is
considered a tier below Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan because he
didn't throw hard. And the world didn't finally accept LeBron James as a great player until he "took
over" games in the 2012 Playoffs.